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Media Power Practices in Building a Frame of Economic and Political News During the Presidential Election Campaign of the Republic of Indonesia 2019

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Media Power Practices in Building a Frame of Economic and Political News During the Presidential Election Campaign of the Republic of Indonesia 2019 Media Power Practices in Building a Frame of Economic and Political News During The Presidential Election Campaign of The Republic of Indonesia 2019 Siap Bangun Negara 1, Udi Rusadi 2 Institut Ilmu Sosial dan Ilmu Politik Jakarta, Indonesia 1,2 {[email protected] 1, [email protected] 2} Abstract. This study departs from a theoretical problem that the media must be free from all pressures and influences from both inside and outside parties in addition to serving the public interest. But the phenomenon is that there is still a strong influence of capital owners on media content. The inclusion of Republika's media leader, Erick Tohir, in the Presidential Candidate and Vice President No. 1 winning team in the 2019 Election, will have consequences for the process of producing news and the content it produces. This study aims to explore how the practice of power relations in building a frame in the production of news content and how the frame formed in the General Election of President and Vice President 2019-2024. The theory used is the theory of social reality construction, political economy economic theory, news production and framing theory. The framing method is used to examine the process of building a frame through interviews, observation, while to examine the news frame is used a text analyst that is the Entman model framing analysis. The results showed that in the process of building a news frame, the media crew claimed there was no intervention from the media owner who only explained his position, duties and functions as the head of the winning team for the Presidential Candidate and Vice President No. 1, while framing analysts' results show that Republika news frames in the economy illustrate positive performance which indirectly provides support to the candidate. From these it can be concluded that in the frame construction there has been a dominant hegemonic power relation that produces news frames that benefits the candidates. Keywords: Power Practices; Frame Building; News Framing; Campaigns 1 Introduction In principle, the media are required to be free from all influences, because the media are actually serving the public interest. But talking about media independence, until now, there is no media that is truly ideal and free from intervention. Not only in Indonesia, but even in America and Europe similar phenomena occur, where economic and political pressure on the mass media also exists. Not much different from in the United States (US). Chomsky and ICA 2019, October 16-17, Bali, Indonesia Copyright © 2021 EAI DOI 10.4108/eai.16-10-2019.2304326 Herman use the concept of The Propaganda Model and see that the mass media in the US tends to depend on sources of information that come from the elite [1]. There has also been a tendency for the media to participate in propaganda campaigns that support the interests of the elite. Political elite intervention is more easily seen in the coverage of the General Election process, as found in the study of Catrina which concluded that there was a strong influence of capital owners on media content during the 2014 election period [2]. The existence of political affiliation made it difficult for the media to separate political interests in decision the news. The reason, a number of presidential candidates who took part in the 2014 presidential election are the owners of a media group. For example, Aburizal Bakrie with the Viva group, Surya Paloh with the Media Group, and Hari Tanoesoedibjo with the MNC Group. The influence of capital owners and media owners has disrupted the independence and neutrality of media organizations. The mass media is experiencing economic and political pressure in formulating editorial policies. Catrina mentions that due to political affiliation, the media have difficulty in separating political interests in reporting decisions [2]. Not only refracting the function of the mass media, the intervention of the owners of capital on media content has a negative impact on the development of media independence and limits media movement. Interventions of various interests will arise in the mastery of public opinion as stated by D'Angelo, critical scholars often look at public opinion in the aggregate to show how public opinion is dominated by media frames [3]. In the framing process media organizations use their power in news selection (its function as a gate keeper) to frame news content. In this sense, the media not only provides information, but can also become autonomous actors in the political process. Related to the power relations in the practice of the media, in the general election process in Indonesia in 2019, there was the phenomenon of the pair-vice presidential candidate number 01 (Jokowi-Ma'ruf Amin) making Erick Thohir as the Chairperson of the Indonesian National Coalition Working Team that supported the Jokowi pair -Ma'ruf. As is known, Erick Thohir is known as a media businessman, where the Republika newspaper is under the auspices of his Mahaka Group. Judged by researchers to have a strong political content. The researchers' assumption is that this phenomenon can influence the frame of news that provides support to the pair of President and Vice President No. 1. This study aims to answer the question, is there a practice of power relations in the process of building news frames, and what frames are built up. To prove this research will focus on economic and political news, because the issue is an issue that is directly related to the public interest. 2 Method This research uses a critical paradigm in line with what D'Angelo stated that in framing analysis studies can use multiple paradigms, namely constructivist, cognitive, and critical paradigms [3]. In framing analysis studies that use constructivist paradigms tend to be able to build a theory. Whereas the cognitive paradigm connects how the influence of individual frames with news frames. Meanwhile, framing analysis with a critical paradigm can probe the extent to which media routines and journalist professional values enhance the democratic climate for individuals and community groups. The critical aspect in this research is to make an effort to study the power practices that occur in the democratic process, to reveal whether the dominance of the news frame is due to the power practices in the news production process in the Republika newspaper. Departing from the critical paradigm, this study uses a qualitative approach. This qualitative research is carried out by observing objects in research phenomena to understand and study the problems related to language and terminology from the actors involved in them. Kirk and Miller explain that qualitative research is a particular tradition in social science that fundamentally depends on observing humans in their own region and relating to these people in their language and terminology [4]. The frame building of economic and political news is examined by examining the process of input, process and news coverage [5] by conducting in-depth interviews with journalists, Republika media editors and conducting observations and discussions on the news production process in the newsroom. To prove what happens in the next frame buliding process, media text analysis is carried out with the Entman framing analysis model which suggests that frames in the news can be examined and identified by the presence or absence of certain keywords, stock phrases, stereotypical images, sources of information and sentences which provides thematic clusters that reinforce facts or judgments [6]. Thematic cluster consists of several attributes: Define problems/Problem Identification, Diagnosis of Causes/Causal Interpretation (Estimating the cause/source of the problem), Make Moral Judgment/Moral Evaluation (Making moral decisions/Assessing the cause of the problem), Treatment Recommendation (Emphasize completion). The unit of analysis and the object of text studied in this study are headlines related to economic and political issues that were restricted during the 2019 Presidential Election campaign period (September 23, 2018 - April 13, 2019). During this period the researchers then sorted out the number of news related to economic and political issues during the 2019 Presidential Election campaign in the Republika newspaper and selected 10 headlines plus one Erick Thohir column on page one as the unit of analysis that was determined by the purposive sampling technique. which is not random where the researcher determines the sampling by determining the sampling and assigning special characteristics that fit the purpose of the study so that later it can answer the research problem. 3 Results and Discussion One thing that needs to be noted here is that every news topic proposal that will be raised tomorrow starts from the formation and construction of a frame (frame-building) from the framing side in the newsroom, of course it has been adjusted to the influence of internal factors such as Republika's editorial policies and the value of the news itself to the individual influence of the reporter who wrote the news and the editor who did the editing, as well as the signs of the media owner. While the influence of external factors involved in this process can occur due to the influence of news sources, advertising sources/from readers, to the influence of the government and the environment. The reporter's proposal will then be updated in the morning until noon by each of the assistant editors/editors. Especially if new issues occur or new issues emerge that make it more interesting and must get more portions to be reported to the public. After the reporting process, all material to be written has been collected in the newsroom section and will be discussed in advance in the editorial meeting every afternoon attended by the editor in chief or its representative, the coverage coordinator, managing editor, newsroom head, executive editorial assistant, editor, assistant editor, to from the advertising section.
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